enterprise agility

I was invited for the 4th Annual PMI event in Wroclaw (Poland) on 19 May 2017 to do the opening keynote. I introduced the narrative of “re-vers-ify” (re-imagining your Scrum to re-vers-ify your organisation).

During the day I was interviewed by Paulina Szczepaniak about “re-vers-ify” for the international PMI magazine.

The conversations I had with Vasco Duarte about Scrum, Scrum Masters and Scrum Master challenges were broadcasted in the week of 17-21 April 2017.

As an extension Vasco asked me to clarify the ideas I had expressed as “re.vers.ify“. Our conversation has been broadcasted on 21 May 2017 and is NOW AVAILABLE at the Scrum Master Toolbox website.

In “re.vers.ify“ I have consolidated over a decade of experience, ideas, beliefs and observations of Scrum and organisational transformation through Scrum (or the lack thereof). Re.vers.ify is an act, an act of simplicity, rhythm and focus. Re.vers.ify is a way for people to re.imagine their Scrum, and deliberately re-emerge the structures of their organisation. Re.vers.ify helps people and organisations shape the third Scrum wave.

Agility is an organisation’s state of high responsiveness, speed and adaptiveness. Agility is an organisation’s state of continual adaptation and optimisation, a state in which each status quo is challenged, by our own will or by external turbulence.

Agility is a state that is a natural fit for the unpredictability so common to the work of complex product delivery and to the markets that organisations operate within. However, it requires accepting that the work is unpredictable, a mental barrier to overcome. Agility is why teams and organisations adopt Agile processes. From that adoption agility increases, a new of working emerges, new organisational ways of learning, improving and constant adaptation, and restored respect for people, re-humanisation.

Scrum helps. The distinct rules of Scrum help. Scrum is actionnable. Agile and Scrum, actually, are two inseparable ingredients in a complex product delivery ecosystem. Scrum can be your foundation for agility. Sprints are at the heart of business agility in generating a regular flow of improvements, updates, learnings and various other sources of value. Organisations discover, experiment and deliver on opportunities from an end-to-end perspective in the fastest possible way. People develop new ways of working; through discovery, experimentation-based implementation and collaboration. They enter this new state of being, this state of agility; a state of constant change, evolution and improvement. Re-humanisation takes place. Innovation surfaces again.

The path of increasing agility via Scrum is inevitably bound to be a cobblestone path. It might take some time to accept that agility starts and ends with people, not with procedures or tools. It might take some time to accept that agility takes time, that agility need not be analyzed, designed and planned. It might take some time to accept that agility occurs:

Agility can’t be planned;

Agility can’t be dictated;

Agility has no end-state.

A time-planned way to become (more) agile introduces unfavourable expectations. Introducing Agile methods to increase agility causes significant organisational change. Several existing procedures, departments and functions will be impacted. There is no way of predicting what needs will be encountered at what point in time, how these will be dealt with and what the exact outcome will be in order to control next steps. It is a highly complex and unpredictable journey. There is no way of predicting the pace at which the state of agility will take root and spread.

Scrum and agility are much more about behaviour than about (following) a new process. A decision to adopt Scrum is a decision to leave the old ways behind. It is not only about accepting but about celebrating the fact that agility is living the art of the possible. It requires the courage, honesty and conviction of acting in the moment, acting upon the reality that is exposed by iterative-incremental progress information. Agility is about doing the best possible at every possible moment, constrained by the means we have and facing the constraints. A time-planned way ignores the essence of Scrum and Agile, that of dealing with complexity via well-considered steps of experimentation and learning. Time-plans simply extend the old thinking. In general a plan will even slow down the overall increase of agility, because serious delays and waiting times are incorporated.

Time-plans create the illusion of deadlines and a final end-state. Agility has no end-state.

Living the art of the possible engages people and accelerates a transformation as it shapes the future, thrives upon the future and what the future might bring. It’s a bright future for organizations that have the vision, the determination and the dedication.

These basic truths must be in the hearts and minds of every person managing, guiding, facilitating, hoping or striving for agility. And even then, it takes time for agility to settle in the hearts and minds of the people impacted. After all, people have been instructed in the wrong behavior of the industrial paradigm for 15 to 20 years, or more. Agility starts and ends with people, not with tools, procedures or games.

In early 2001, with the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the adjective ‘agile’ obtained a specific meaning in the context of software development. The manifesto, commonly known as the Agile Manifesto, holds 4 value statements with 12 principles behind it. In these values and principles the signatories of the manifesto captured the mindset, the DNA, common to their approaches to software development.

Over the years to follow, Agile became a proper noun, capitalized, pretty popular and ultimately big business as the methods for Agile software development were increasingly adopted. Success obfuscates and diminishes actionability, it seems. Today “Agile” is all over the place; coming in many flavors, wrappings, definitions, interpretations, and discounted. “Agile” sells. It is probably the most used prefix for roles, jobs, positions, functions and phases found in the software industry. The fact that Agile is a set of values and principles is easily ignored, as are the actual values and principles themselves.

Correlating ‘scaling’ to Agile has a similar neglect. Tactics change with scale. Strategies change with scale. Values and principles don’t change with scale. Claims and statements on the need, the ability, the inability, the whatever to scale Agile are plainly besides the point. Values and principles are agnostic of scale.

Agility, as an extension of Agile, refers to the state that people, teams, organizations hope to achieve by adopting Agile development processes. Agility, as such an extension, is a state of high responsiveness, speed and adaptiveness; a state of constant invocation of change, evolution and improvement. A state of agility enables people, teams, organizations to better deal with the natural complexity and unpredictability of the work of software development itself, the organizational context within which it happens and the external circumstances faced. The adoption of Agile indeed is an important foundation for this (business or enterprise) agility.

Scrum emerged in the early ’90s from the work of Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. They formalised and turned Scrum into a cohesive set of rules and roles for complex product development, that was formally presented to the public for the first time in 1995. The definition of Scrum, its rules and roles are described in the Scrum Guide. Both co-creators of Scrum are signatories of the Agile Manifesto. The values and principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development underpin the Scrum framework which thrives on empiricism and self-organization. Scrum is better understood when seen through the lens of the Agile Manifesto.

As with Agile, the Scrum Values and Scrum’s fundamental roles and rules as described in the Scrum Guide don’t change with scale. But scaled implementations of Scrum require different tactics in implementing the rules.

In Scrum, actually… Agile is the DNA driving the behavior throughout the software development ecosystem.

Agile and Scrum, actually, are two inseparable ingredients in a software development ecosystem.

As from 2011 there has been a genuine boom of Scrum in the Netherlands. And it is still going on. A virus improving the lives of many people in the fascinating world of software development. I have worked with several Dutch organizations, of which ING is probably one of the biggest, one that I documented by the end of 2012.

In March 2012 Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator and my working partner at Scrum.org, asked whether I saw room for a Scrum event in the Netherlands. Yes, and we named it “Scrum Day Europe”. We set it up with 3 co-organizing companies around the ideas of “Software in 30 Days”. The goal was not to make it just another average agile event, so we went for a smaller event, with a clear management focus and much room for interaction. It turned out a great success, so a 2013 edition was organized with some small, incremental changes. Ken and I opened the 2013 edition with a keynote on the Agility Path framework for Enterprise Scrum that we were working on.

This year, 2014, will see the 3rd edition of the Scrum Day Europe event. The event is now part of Scrum.org’s prestigious Scrum Day for Professionals series. We have limited the co-organizing companies to our Scrum.org partner-in-principle Prowareness and have complemented that with a more substantial involvement of the communities. Because, in the end, Scrum.org’s role is to serve, help and facilitate the many Scrum practitioners out there, and this event is a great way to connect people and ideas.

I look forward to meeting with great fellow Scrum travelers at the event, hoping YOU will be one of them. Have a look at the program and the speakers. Get your ticket via the Scrum Day Europe website, or directly at Scrum.org.

On 11 July 2012 the first edition of the Scrum Day Europe was organized. The theme of the day was “Software in 30 Days”, after the book that Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland published in April 2012. In line with the book, our objective was to address executive people of organizations interested in or already adopting Scrum. Over 130 attendants came and made out an uncommon audience for an agile conference, turning it into not your average agile conference but with tons of energy and enthusiasm.

On 4 July 2013 the second edition of the Scrum Day Europe will be organized. The 2013 theme is “Enterprise Scrum“, after the new C-Scrum framework for Continuous Improvement that Scrum.org has developed. I was so lucky to be deeply involved in this great evolutionary step in the existence of Scrum. Ken Schwaber will again open the day with a keynote. Yours truly will also do a session again. The program will be further developed soon.

On 11 July 2012 we organized the first edition of the Scrum Day Europe (for which I previously published the abstracts of Ken Schwaber and myself). 130+ enthusiast people gathered, interacted and connected at the beautiful location of “Pakhuis De Zwijger” near the Amsterdam docks (Netherlands). I was delighted to see so many friends of Scrum; Professional Scrum students, colleagues, clients and personal friends. And I am extremely grateful for the appreciation and the energy received.

Ken Schwaber opened the day with an inspiring talk on the global accomplishments of Scrum, and how well this positive change for the software industry is currently being embraced in Belgium and the Netherlands. He announced he is working on further evolutions of the Scrum framework towards management and organizational improvement.

The CIO of Tele2, Svenja de Vos, talked us through the practicalities of their ‘big bang’, ‘no guts, no glory’-style transition to Scrum.

Subsequently the audience split up to (1) join an OpenSpace, (2) play some agile games and (3) enjoy more perspectives to Scrum (change basics, coaching people and Scrum in a hosting environment).

After lunch the full group joined again in the central room to listen to the highly energetic story of Amir Arooni, member of the ING IT management team. He gave the crowd an honest insight into their findings, impediments and future hopes after a 1+ year, large-scale transformation to Scrum. I was honored to be mentioned by Amir as one of the crucial guides of their transformation.

As Capgemini global leader for Scrum I was asked by Ken to do my talk on the ‘Emergence of the Customer-Oriented Enterprise’, an organizational pattern to build on the Scrum framework to achieve enterprise agility. Beyond the appreciation I received I was particularly glad for getting away with a form of humor. My presentation is free for download. All pictures and presentations of the event are available at the Scrum Day Europe website.

Here’s a very personal selection of (mostly mobile) pictures by friends:

A big thanks to Scrum.org, all co-organizers and I hope to see you next year!